


Journey to the West

by spnredemption



Series: Redemption Road [16]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-04
Updated: 2012-02-04
Packaged: 2017-11-11 23:17:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/483983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spnredemption/pseuds/spnredemption
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>This story is an old story.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Journey to the West

**Author's Note:**

> **Masterpost:** **[Supernatural: Redemption Road](http://spn-redemption.livejournal.com/1552.html)** (for full series info, warnings, and disclaimer)  
>  **Author:** [](http://peroxidepest17.livejournal.com/profile)[**peroxidepest17**](http://peroxidepest17.livejournal.com/)  
>  **Characters/Pairing:** Dean/Castiel, Sam  
>  **Rating:** PG-13  
>  **Word Count:** ~22,000  
>  **Warnings:** language, mild violence, spoilers for _[Journey to the West](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West)_  
>  **Betas:** [](http://nyoka.livejournal.com/profile)[**nyoka**](http://nyoka.livejournal.com/) and [](http://zatnikatel.livejournal.com/profile)[**zatnikatel**](http://zatnikatel.livejournal.com/)  
>  **Art:** Chapter banner base art by [](http://kasienka-nikki.livejournal.com/profile)[**kasienka_nikki**](http://kasienka-nikki.livejournal.com/) , modified with permission. First digital painting by [](http://abitofgray.livejournal.com/profile)[**abitofgray**](http://abitofgray.livejournal.com/) , which you can also find **[here](http://spn-redemption.livejournal.com/20271.html)** ; second digital painting by [](http://frozenlilacs.livejournal.com/profile)[**frozenlilacs**](http://frozenlilacs.livejournal.com/) , which you can also find **[here](http://spn-redemption.livejournal.com/20173.html)** (art contains spoilers for the episode).

  


  


When Sam wakes it's with a pounding headache and an incredibly unpleasant case of dry mouth. By unpleasant he means the kind you get from either a really long surprise trek through a scorching desert, or from too much MSG-laden late night delivery from the Chinese restaurant down the street. Both are, unfortunately, experiences he is incredibly familiar with having grown up Winchester.

As for today's particular flavor of _Why God, Why?_ , he can't recall there being any scorching deserts to trek across in Minnesota at the tail end of winter.

Which means the culprit must have been last night's cheap Chinese food after all.

Groaning softly under his breath, he peels open one gummy eye to half-mast and gingerly sits up. It makes the room spin for a little bit but he doesn't yak or anything, which he takes as a promising sign. Encouraged, he pauses to take a deep breath before slowly peeling open his other eye.

He's in a room. It's nice, even through the slightly unfocused lens of Headache Vision.

Also, this room being nice means that it is most definitely not the same crappy motel they'd checked into this afternoon, when they'd arrived in Walker, Minnesota, hot on the heels of several more leads found via Bobby's comprehensive collection of online newspaper subscriptions, all conveniently involving clear-cut missing-persons-and-questionable-possible-underwater-monster-activities.

Given the circumstances, Sam is beginning to think that the whole thing last night might have been a trap. A trap featuring delicious, drug-laden Chinese delivery at fifty percent off. Bobby had said it sounded like a trap even before the fifty percent off part got tacked on, way back in this case's infancy.

"Cass County?" Bobby had said, around an arched eyebrow and a skeptical look. "Leech Lake? Sounds like a trap to me. And not a particularly good one, either."

Sam, at the time, had thought those coincidences to be too overt, even for monsters that want to kill them and destroy the world (not necessarily in that order, though for some reason they always seem to try it in that order).

Apparently, subtlety is only a characteristic of pre-Lucifer-walking-the-Earth days. Kind of. Whatever.

Sam rubs his face with both hands and feels like maybe he shouldn't have ordered the Sichuan Eggplant last night. His is a life full of regrets.

Nothing to do but to get past them.

  


He stares at the far wall for a moment, to ground himself, and when he feels like a vaguely competent adult human being again, he stands up and takes in his surroundings more analytically.

He's in some sort of ornate wood-framed bed that could pass for its own room if not for the fact that it is all contained on some sort of raised platform. There are intricate carvings on each of the bed's four posters, with a dragon curving its way along the top archway while the framed window-like panels on either side of him boast some sort of flowery pattern similar to ones he'd seen on the doors of a San Francisco dim sum restaurant once, when he and Jess had taken the weekend and driven up from Palo Alto to see the Golden Gate Bridge just because they could. The carvings on the panels are accented in gold leaf, and he can tell that the finish had once been flawlessly glossy, but looks like a well-loved antique now, in the spots where the sheen has been worn slightly dull with time.

There are entirely too many fat, silk-brocaded down pillows strewn about the bed, which Sam has very obviously flattened pretty thoroughly under the bulk of his very large frame and the apparent violence of his drug-addled slumber. From the state of the bed, he's thinking it's a good thing he can't, for the life of him, remember any of his nightmares.

That portion of the room thus analyzed and deemed non-threatening (if slightly disturbing), Sam stands up, drops slowly over the edge of the bed, and steps off of the paneled platform and into the room proper.

The sight he sees when he gets there makes him wonder if he is in the midst of a drug-addled nightmare after all.

For the most part, the room seems room-like. Four walls, a bed (if a strange one), some cabinets, a few decorative, oriental-looking vases, and a bright, leafy green bamboo plant in a stone-planter beside the large, heavy-looking door right in front of him. It's kind of Zen, though that's the Japanese way of saying it, and this room is pretty clearly Chinese. You know, from what he knows of Chinese stuff, having gone to school in California. What he means to say is, it's pretty standard, as far as he can tell, for a room decorated with some sort of Asian theme in mind.

But at the same time, on either side of the door, there is a pair of floor-to-ceiling glass windows, one to his immediate left and the other to his immediate right. Windows of course, aren't particularly the things of drug-addled nightmares, but to be fair to Sam, what he sees _through_ the windows either means that he is currently in the home of Jensen Ackles — the actor who likes inappropriately large fish tanks in inappropriate places — or he's currently in a fancy Asian-inspired hotel room that is also _underwater_.

Judging by the slightly murky quality of the water and the fact that the fish lazily swimming by are not exactly the kind you adopt as pets (rock pike and northern bass are probably delicious but not particularly easy to keep, even for a celebrity), Sam is thinking it is more likely he's underwater than at some douchebag actor's ostentatious home. Also, that is just his life.

He takes a moment to sigh a little.

He supposes that on the one hand, he has now miraculously solved the mystery of Leech Lake's string of disappearing people, which is why they'd made the trip in the first place. Here he'd thought it would be complicated too, mostly because all the preceding cases involved salt-water disappearances and people vanishing in large groups with very few (if any) witnesses left behind.

The lake disappearances in Minnesota seemed to have been the exact opposite of all that but somehow similar at once. Intriguing? Yes, at the time. Not so much now that Sam thinks it might actually be some sort of strange tentacle-monster date-rape rather than the strange tentacle-monster face-eating that had fit the patterns.

Dean, Sam thinks, will have a field day with that one. Mostly because Sam cannot forget some of the very strange and disturbing Japanese cartoon porn his brother had pulled up on the internet the other day as "research" on the topic. Sam had said it was irrelevant. Dean had said that he couldn't help what the number one Google search result for _tentacles_ was.

Waking up in a Chinese-style wedding bed with the biggest headache of ever and not being able to remember the details of the night before seems to suggest that Sam's brother had been more right about everything when he'd researched tentacle porn than disgusting (though he had been disgusting as well).

Sam shakes his head groggily. Speaking of brothers, he should probably try to find them.

He strides towards the imposing gilded cherry wood door, ignores the bigmouth bass that suddenly _thunks_ right against the window beside him, and tries to think of a way to locate Dean and Cas (if they're even here, because let's face it, in the story of their lives that involves getting inappropriately drugged and hit on by monsters, Sam is the only Winchester who actually answers that call).

Much to his surprise, the door opens with a click under his hand.

  


Castiel, for the most part, has decided that while he does not enjoy sleep itself, he enjoys the sensation of waking, particularly when he is allowed to do it slowly. And by that, he means that he particularly enjoys the sensation of waking up slowly next to _Dean_.

Today's experience however, is none of the enjoyable things that he has learned are all possibilities involving Dean over the last few months.

This, he thinks, is a lot more like the hours after he'd drunk the liquor store.

And this time, Dean is not here to offer him medication and companionship.

Dean is not here at all.

Castiel's eyes fly open.

The sight he is greeted with is chilling, despite the fact that he is lying on a warm, comfortable mattress of red silk and goose down, despite the fact that the antique Chinese marriage bed he finds himself in is exquisite, perfectly cared for, and beautifully aged in every detail of its hand-carved Qing dynasty splendor.

_Dean is not here_.

Castiel scrambles up and out of the warm cocoon of the blankets, forgetting, for the moment, the sluggishness of his mind and the weariness of his bones as he spreads his wings and crashes forward, off of the wooden platform and to the stone-worked floor.

A plethora of wood-carved images greet his eyes as he glances around the room, all of them depictions of a famous journey taken thousands of years ago, an entire world away. The fierce countenance of Sun Wukong entering the Cave of the Water Curtains greets him from the left. When he turns his head in any which direction, the Monkey King is there as well, stealing the peaches from the heavenly gardens and gaining immortality in one depiction, or planting the flag at the peak of Flower Fruit Mountain and declaring himself the Great Sage Equal to Heaven in another.

Wide-eyed, Castiel attempts to throw himself into flight, to follow the thread of himself that is always connected to the Winchesters in order to find them and try to free them from the great and terrifying creature that dwells here. Dean, he knows, is close, and so then, Sam must be as well. He must carry them away from here as soon as possible even if it tears him apart to do it.

He finds he cannot move at all.

And there is no door or window in this room within the Crystal Palace, he discovers mournfully. Only one last, enormous image of Sun Wukong to greet him, with the Monkey King trapped alone for 500 years under Five Finger Mountain, sentenced to imprisonment there by Buddha for his crimes against the celestial armies of the Jade Emperor's court. Sun Wukong killed 100,000 heavenly soldiers that day, until the Jade Emperor had been forced to pray for help. It is a story Castiel remembers well.

He slams a fist into the wall ineffectually and wonders if he is here to be punished in the same manner as the Monkey King, for daring to raise his head farther than his neck should have allowed.

And like Sun Wukong, Castiel thinks he would have accepted this punishment without protest, for his crimes are even greater than those of the Monkey King, who, in the end, only strove to gain recognition for his strength. Castiel attempted to usurp _God_ himself and declared himself not equal to Heaven but greater. If this had been punishment for that, Castiel would have gladly accepted it.

But Dean is here, he knows. He can feel it in the faint thrum of familiarity in the handprint seared over his chest, in the parts of himself he'd given over to Dean's soul when he'd claimed him from the Pit.

If Dean is here as well, Castiel will not accept this imprisonment.

He sits down and tries to think of a way out.

  


Dean, having had a good number of nights (particularly of late) that he would consider good nights despite some of the stupid things that may have also happened on those nights, wakes up knowing that last night had definitely not been a good night.

For one thing, everything inside of his mouth feels fuzzy in a chemical sort of way that means he hasn't had it anywhere on or in Cas. For another, his eyes are stuck together, and he feels like he could drink a gallon of water and not miss the fact that it's not alcohol. Also, he has no shoes on. Which, okay, would normally be fine, but the thing is, he doesn't remember taking them off last night at all.

In fact, the last thing he really remembers is tipping the delivery guy five bucks and opening up a doggie bag of Orange Chicken for Cas to try while looking at Sam and telling him he agrees with Bobby; there's no way they get called to a case in _Cass County_ without something being fishy.

Sam had been in snooty-nerd mode and muttered something about _dead giveaways_ around a mouthful of greasy, squishy looking eggplant. Dean had been too fascinated by his disgust at watching his little brother consume something that looked like fried slug to pay complete attention to Sam's diatribe on subtle evil-villain type planning strategies. Plus, Cas had been staring at his chicken like he suspected some sort of evil monster attack to come bursting out of it. It had been three kinds of hilariously adorable, and the fact that Dean thought _anything_ was adorable had been enough to stop him in his tracks and force his brain to go searching throughout the rest of his body for any emergency stores of testosterone it might have saved up for a rainy day.

Needless to say, the whole situation had been kind of dire, but if it comes down to it he figures that no one can blame him for not paying that much attention to Sam. Also, Cas had used those chopsticks like a fucking pro, hated the Orange Chicken, and decided that plain white rice was his new favorite food. Dean's last coherent thoughts of the evening had been that the Orange Chicken was boss, rice was okay too, _why does Sam keep talking_ , and _I wonder when an angel of the Lord had the time to learn how to use chopsticks but not Google_.

Then Dean had woken up here, and well, this is where they are. And he has no shoes.

That Chinese food must have given him one hell of an MSG coma. But on the plus side, the motel bed seems a lot more comfortable than it had looked.

He grunts, rolls over, and reaches blindly to the area to his left, where Cas is probably curled up, probably feeling nothing but regret over the bad Chinese food.

Except Cas is not there.

Dean finally deigns to crack an eye open.

"Fuck," he mutters when he sees what he sees. He shoots up in bed and suddenly feels a lot less groggy.

Waking up to be essentially face-to-face with a two-pound white sucker fish staring you in the eye kind of does that.

Heart and head both pounding strangely, Dean takes a moment to absorb his surroundings. Even in the midst of a bad food coma, Winchester training demands that he properly case a joint he finds himself in within the first few seconds of finding himself there.

The room is straight out of a goddamn Kung Fu movie.

And that's when Dean decides he doesn't care what his surroundings entail so long as he can find his brother and his angel. He tosses the blankets off, stumbles out of the bed, and heads straight for the large wooden door on the other side of the room.

Which is, predictably, locked. From the outside. Via a latch or something, because there certainly isn't any goddamned keyhole Dean can pick.

Dean takes a second to glare at the door before whirling around again and marching back towards the giant glass aquarium window that the bed is pressed right up against.

This time, he takes an inventory of what he actually has on hand in the room with him. There's a vase with some green leafy sticks in it, an end table, some frilly cushions, and a funny-shaped dresser thing on one side. On the other side of the room is a display with two crossed swords (probably fake), a creepy looking jade lion statue similar to the ones he'd seen lining the doorway to the one Chinese restaurant in Sioux Falls, and a painting of some Chinese dude, a pig, and some sort of red-skinned demon following a monkey in gold armor past some mountains.

It takes him all of two seconds to decide on the hefty-looking lion statue sitting under the weird painting thing. He figures it's time to break himself the hell out of here.

He sends the base of the lion statue crashing down against the doorframe. The flawless wood splinters and cracks under the weight, and that, Dean thinks with a bit of spiteful glee, is that.

  


Sam pokes his head out into the hallway at the exact same moment there is a splintering crack from the door directly across the hall from his. He startles, naturally, because up until that moment it had been very quiet and all he had been able to perceive had been the long, red-carpeted hallway that seemed to stretch on forever, the unhinged latch outside of his door, and the fact that the ceiling was entirely clear, as if someone had decided that making an underwater palace out of glass would be the coolest thing ever. Maybe they've been abducted by a celebrity-douchebag tentacle monster. Why the hell not? God is a deadbeat Dad, Hell is a red-tape DMV-wannabe nightmare, and Death is a foodie. Anything is possible in this day and age apparently.

Sam manages to duck back into his room slightly as the door frame across from him continues to splinter under a series of heavy _whack, whack, whack_ sounds that make it seem like whoever or whatever on the other side is really interested in getting the hell out at all speed.

Sam turns slightly white when he imagines that it might be Dean or even Cas, stuck in a locked room within the Asian-fetish style wedding bed of their celebrity-douchebag tentacle monster while it tries to pull a Kobe Bryant Colorado special on them.

Either that or it _is_ the tentacle monster on the other side and it's coming for Sam.

Sam decides that neither option is particularly pleasant, but the first is by far the worst of the two. He darts forward just in time for the closed latch on the door to give a little creak and stutter.

The door bursts open.

Dean stumbles out, holding some sort of ridiculous jade lion statue and looking triumphant.

The two Winchester brothers blink at each other in the middle of the hallway for a second.

"Dean?" Sam asks tentatively.

"Sam."

A moment passes wherein they kind of stare at each other, mostly because they are sizing each other up and making sure they are in fact, who they claim to be. There is no lingering or longing or any of the stuff fangirls like to read into the staring. Just good survival instincts in the face of not having any silver or holy water immediately on hand. From what Sam can ascertain, Dean has all the same scars as yesterday, the same clothes (though both of them seem to be missing their shoes), the same number of faint hickeys that Sam would rather not notice but had anyway because this has been their lives since he was six months old and stuff. His possibly fake-or-possessed brother's face is belligerent and confused and worried, which is an expression that is exactly Dean and that, as far as Sam can remember, none of the monster impersonators have been able to fake quite right as of yet.

"Where the hell are we?" Dean says first, after having apparently come to the conclusion that Sam is indeed as much Sam as can be figured at the moment. He sets the lion down (it looks heavy), while Sam assesses Dean's splintered door and the latch, which is still hanging on to the frame somewhat pathetically. He's pretty sure their celebrity-douchebag tentacle monster isn't going to like that.

"I don't know," Sam says after a beat, furrowing his brow. "I wonder why they locked you in and not me."

Dean blinks. "They didn't lock you in?"

Sam shakes his head and gestures back to his door, still open, the latch completely intact and unused. "It was just…open. When I woke up."

Dean snorts. "Huh. I guess I'm just scarier than you, Sam."

Sam scowls at his brother because he is like an entire _foot_ taller than him and has a twenty-pound advantage _and_ used to house the devil.

Which is…not something he particularly wants to argue as a check in the favor of his scariness, actually.

Dean has already moved on, rubbing one hand along the side of his neck (the side with the most hickeys, coincidentally), as he looks around the empty hallway. "We need to find Cas."

"Is he even here?"

Dean gives him a look, this totally obvious sort of _"Well where the hell else would he be?"_ kind of thing that, if the hickeys weren't a sign, would totally be his first clue that his brother is more in love than sensible right now. "He's here."

"How do you know?" Sam posits, not to be contrary, but mostly because Cas is still sort of an angel and it is entirely possible that whatever has them trapped has taken special precautions to contain an angel. Which might not exactly involve holding Cas in a marriage bed underwater so much as a giant flaming ring of holy oil somewhere drier.

Dean looks vaguely embarrassed at his brother's question, and the hand rubbing at the side of his neck unconsciously drifts over to his shoulder a little, before he resolutely yanks it back down to his side again. "He's here, man. I just know."

Sam supposes that's as good an answer as any. If Dean could find one angel in the eternity of Purgatory then one measly see-through underwater _whatever_ might be child's play for all Sam knows.

"Okay. So then…where is he?"

The two brothers look around. Their two open doors remain as such, and for the first time Sam notices that they are the only two doors readily visible down the entire length of hallway, which is odd, considering the fact that Sam's room hadn't seemed large enough to warrant such a long, unbroken expanse of real estate.

Dean seems to come to the same conclusion.

"I guess we should start looking," Sam says with the slight edge of a sigh in his voice. He reaches behind him and shuts the door to his room. By now it's probably a pointless gesture, but hey, if whoever is keeping them here sees it and thinks he's still inside, it could buy them anywhere from a second (until they see Dean's splintered door frame), to hours, if they don't bother looking at the other side (unlikely).

Dean, in the meantime, grabs the lion statue again (it still looks heavy), before frowning. "Wait here for a second," he says and takes the lion statue back into his room. Sam blinks in confusion before Dean comes striding back towards him a moment later, carrying a pair of large, flimsy swords with golden handles and tasseled ends.

Which are probably useless in the long run, but that isn't the interesting part of this whole sequence of events.

Sam is the one who sees it when, as Dean is closing the broken door behind him (probably more out of instinct than anything else), there is a faint flash of light along the wall right beside Dean's door. The flash itself looks for a moment exactly like another door.

Dean tosses one of the swords at Sam, who fails entirely to catch it because he's too busy going towards the bit of wall immediately towards Dean's right. "Did you see that?" Sam asks. The sword goes clattering to the floor.

Dean frowns. "See what?"

"For a second, I thought I saw a door right here," Sam insists.

Dean stares at the section of wall. "Yeah, I got nothing."

Sam's brow furrows deeply as he runs his fingers along the edges of what he thought he'd seen. "No, I think…"

He trails off, looking triumphant as his fingers (if not his eyes) find a seam. "Dean, there's something here."

Dean blinks and strides cautiously forward. "What, like a secret passageway?"

"I don't know, maybe." Sam stretches both arms out, his impressive wingspan discovering the edges of what seem to be exactly what he'd just seen: a door. "Right here. You can feel it."

He grabs Dean's hand without permission and presses it up against the edge of his invisible door.

The moment Dean's hand comes in contact there is another flash of impossibly blue-white light, and the borders, for an instant, are made completely visible to both Winchesters.

Dean stares. "Huh," he says, articulately.

From the other side of the door, they hear a faint, confused, "Dean!? Sam!?"

Sam can't help himself when he grins a little at the sound of that voice.

Dean is too busy scrabbling at the wall to notice. " _Cas_?!" he exclaims, and Sam doesn't for an instant (even as he gloats to himself about being clever), miss the note of blatant relief in his brother's voice.

  


The first time the wall in front of him flashes slightly Castiel nearly misses it, so immersed in his _thoughts_ as he tries to finagle a way out of here that what is immediately before him seems to lose all consequence.

The second time it happens, much brighter and louder than the first time, and tinged in something so patently familiar that he could not ignore it no matter _how_ deep in thought or crisis he may be, he flies toward it and presses his hand to the wall. "Dean!? Sam?!" he shouts, and he can only wonder what they might be thinking of doing, when they are stuck in this place of all places, guests or prisoners (Castiel hasn't decided yet) of one of his Father's oldest, most monstrous creations.

Funny how a God in his youth is much like a young human in that they are both more fascinated with fantastical, impossible beasts and monsters than in anything remotely practical.

" _Cas_?!" Dean exclaims in reply, rather more loudly than is probably wise at the moment, and Castiel can hear a pounding from the other side that sounds a lot like fists trying to slam through the wall. It is unlikely such a feat as that is possible in Ao Guang's Crystal Palace. Or wise. The Emperor, Castiel is convinced, would not like tiny human things destroying his priceless antiquities or his ancient home of legend.

"Dean, there is no way out," Castiel informs him. "You must leave me here." Castiel will face Ao Guang, will speak to the old monster and discover what he wants. He will certainly have more courage to do so if Dean and Sam are gone from this place.

"There freaking _is_ a way out," Dean growls back determinedly, and then, more faintly, Castiel can make out Dean telling his brother to " _Stay here and keep watch_ ," before marching off, possibly to enact a very hasty, and probably very stupid, plan of attack.

Castiel has no doubts about his love for Dean, but even so, he knows that one of Dean's major shortcomings (or strengths, depending on the moment or the interpretation of the observer) is an inability to sit idly by and wait for anything should he feel he could be doing something (anything) instead, no matter how rashly concocted a plan of attack that something may be.

Castiel sighs.

  


"Stay here and keep watch," Dean grumbles to his brother darkly, before turning back to the door to his room, possibly to get his jade lion again and bash things until they do what he wants them to. Which might have worked on the wooden doors, but which will probably not work on the heavy stonework of the walls.

Sam is about to protest, except that the second Dean opens the door to his room, the seam under his fingertips delineating the door to Castiel's room suddenly disappears completely, leaving nothing but smooth marble under his fingertips. "Dean!" he shouts in a panic, which causes Dean to come stumbling back out, the jade lion in his arms.

"What?"

"It's gone," Sam reports, frowning. "I can't find the seam anymore."

Dean scowls. "What happened?"

Sam scowls back, because obviously the thread of the door disappearing was _all his fault_ or something. "I don't know, you just went back and then it…"

Dean doesn't wait for reasoning before he's got his nose up against the wall and is pounding at it. "Cas? Hey, Cas!? You still there?!" he demands.

"Yes, Dean," Castiel answers, sounding kind of grumpy. "But Sam is correct. The outline of the door is gone."

Dean shifts the jade lion over his head. "Whatever. Get out of the way, I'm busting in."

"No, don't!" Sam and Cas both manage at the exact same moment.

But not before Dean slams the statue into the wall.

The statue shatters.

The wall does not.

"Goddammit," Dean says and goes back towards his room. Sam can only imagine his brother is going off in search of something bigger and heavier to shatter ineffectually against the wall. Or the invisible door. Or whatever it is.

"Sam," Castiel's faint voice implores from the other side. "What happened?"

Sam huffs a sigh. "Dean went back to his room to find other things to smash," he mutters, and thinks how the headache from the roofied Chinese food is doing a number on his patience as well.

"No…what happened when the seam disappeared? And what happened when it appeared?" Castiel clarifies. "What changed?"

Sam blinks and considers that, and then, not for the first time, feels kind of a surge of joy over the fact that Castiel is with them, because between Dean Hulk-smashing things in his desperation to get to his boyfriend and Sam trying to tell him not to, there's very little room left for any rational thought.

"Right," Sam agrees, because they should do this scientifically. "If we find the trigger, or whatever is causing this, we can…we can find a way out. Maybe." He thinks. "Well, the first time I noticed the light flash was when Dean came back with the swords. The second time was when he touched the door."

He doesn't have to hear anything to know Castiel is thinking hard. "Then perhaps the removal of the swords changed something? Did anything else shift?"

Sam considers it. "The door closed," he says as a kind of detail-oriented throwaway. "Dean dropped one of the swords." But then again, Dean had tossed aside both swords the moment Sam found the door and that hadn't caused anything to change.

"And what changed when the seam disappeared?"

"Dean opened the door and went back in to get the lion."

"And the swords?"

Sam looks over his shoulder where they are still sitting on the floor, forgotten.

"No change."

A beat.

And then, at the exact same moment (and just as Dean is emerging from his room with the end table), the two of them exclaim, rather incredulously, " _The doors!_ "

Dean blinks at his brother, antique table hefted over his head. "What?"

Sam almost, _almost_ , laughs out loud.

  


Dean has never claimed to be the brightest bulb in the box, but he doesn't necessarily consider himself an idiot either, to be fair. It's just that Sam is freakishly smart, and Cas is as old as dirt and a total nerd, and Bobby is probably a combination of all of those things, so in the long run, the company Dean keeps tends to be the kind of company that makes him look dumb even though he knows he isn't.

This is one of those moments when he thinks he never would have noticed the strange and geeky patterns his brother and his…whatever notice.

"So I think it's a puzzle," Sam theorizes out loud to his brother, while on the other side, Castiel says it's likely.

"My door was unlocked for a reason. Dean's was locked for a reason. Cas's…doesn't exist for a reason."

"Very philosophical, Socrates, but can we get to a point?" Dean snaps, mostly because the ceiling is still freaking him out, and a little because Cas trapped in some magical doorless wonder of a room is giving him an entirely strange sense of uncomfortable déjà vu.

Sam gives Dean this disapproving look. "Well, what we know is that when your door closes, the seam on Cas's appears, and when your door opens, it disappears."

Even Dean isn't so stupid to not know that at this point. Especially since Sam had already explained that part.

"So, the questions we need to figure out are, one, why was my door unlocked, which doesn't make sense unless it was supposed to serve a purpose, and two, why your door triggers Cas's door. Or why you touching Cas's door when it's visible makes it flash."

Dean has a headache. "Okay? So how the hell do we figure that out?"

Sam sighs, grabs his brother's hand again, and presses it to about where he remembers the seam being. Nothing.

Dean frowns. "Well so much for that theory."

Sam shakes his head. "No, Dean. It just means certain conditions have to be met before your magic glowing thing works." A light goes on behind Sam's eyes that Dean has since learned to mean his brother's brain is in the middle of that process where it's turning very fast and will probably not make much sense to Dean until it slows down again and goes into explanation mode.

He waits, palm still pressed up against the wall where the door to Cas's prison ought to be.

"We already know both doors being open doesn't do anything, since we didn't notice any effects of this when we were standing with them like that earlier." Sam turns in a circle, looking at his open door and Dean's open door. "And we both know that mine being closed and yours being open doesn't seem to do anything either." He punctuates this with a gesture at both doors, which are currently in their aforementioned states. "But then, when my door was closed and then you closed yours, something changed. So…" he trails off with a thoughtful look at Dean. Dean looks back at him belligerently, because _not getting_ it.

Sam makes a circular motion with his hand, like he expects that gesture to instantly clarify his complex Stanford-educated brain waves into ideas Dean can actually do something with. "So we try the significance of the locks, obviously."

Dean snorts. "Obviously."

Sam presses on despite his brother's unimpressed expression. "Okay. So when I woke up my door was closed but unlocked," he reiterates. "Yours was closed and locked, and we don't know how Cas's was because we couldn't see it under those conditions."

"Again, already been over this, Sam."

"Well, we need to start from the beginning and work forward," Sam tells him before looking over his shoulder to the open and very splintered doorframe of his brother's room. "As best we can, I guess."

Dean scowls. "How the hell was I supposed to know the locks were important?" he says in his own defense. Besides, the latch is still…there. Kind of. Hanging on. Pretty useless, but whatever.

Sam shakes his head. "Just close it and…try to lock it, okay?"

Dean sighs and does as he's told, pulling his door shut again (or as close to shut as it can be), and fiddling with the remnants of each end of the outside latch gingerly, until they at least fold over each other in the way they'd originally been meant to. As he does, the seam to Cas's door flashes again but remains invisible.

Sam looks satisfied. "So, this is what it was when we started. Before I opened my door, before you broke yours down."

Dean barely manages to keep from rolling his eyes.

Sam ignores him, turns back to his door, and opens it. Nothing happens. Apparently satisfied with that (thought Dean isn't), Sam closes it again, but this time snaps the latch shut in order to effectively lock it for the first time.

Across the hall, the latch on Dean's door pops apart and the door itself slides open.

Sam looks triumphant. Dean is not sure why. "Sucky locks," he comments, ignoring the fact that he'd snapped his open by force earlier.

Sam rolls his eyes. "Look, if mine was unlocked and yours was locked, and then when mine locks, yours unlocks, don't you think there's some special way we're supposed to arrange it so that Cas's will unlock?"

Dean supposes it's possible. "Yeah, okay, but his door disappeared when mine was open, right?"

"While mine was unlocked," Sam reminds him.

Dean just wants to smash an end table into a wall and be done with this.

"Okay, Dean, so now, try locking yours again."

Dean thinks that sounds kind of pointless. "Won't it just pop open again?"

Sam looks impatient this time, which is entirely unfair, because he's the one making Dean listen to his brain soundtrack on repeat. "Just do it. Hold it shut if you have to."

Dean shrugs and does as he's told, closing the door, locking the latch, and holding it in place.

This time, the glow of light from Castiel's formerly invisible door is painfully brilliant and not at all unlike an angel's grace exploding. Dean naturally panics at the sight of this, because if all this exercise served to do was blow his angel up he is going to seriously knife a bitch. "Cas!?" he shouts in the midst of the blinding brightness.

"Dean, something is happening!" Castiel answers obligingly, and in accents that do not at all sound like he is going supernova. "Shut your eyes!"

Both Winchesters slam their eyes shut as the light crescendos, impossibly, and then flashes off into nothing.

Dean is the first to open his eyes, just moments before Cas's voice tells them, "It's okay. There is a door now."

And there is.

Right next door to Dean's room, sitting pretty like it had been there all along.

"Can you open it?" Sam asks, looking nerdily triumphant.

There is a thud heavy enough to make both Winchesters wince.

"No," Castiel admits out loud after a moment of what must have been some epic angel trying.

Dean looks at Sam. "Well? Now what?"

Sam thinks. "We got one flash for your door being open and one flash for you touching it. So…"

Dean blinks. "So I touch it and it opens? Really, Sam?"

Sam shrugs helplessly. "It's what I have to go on based on the evidence."

Dean gestures with his eyes to the busted door and the gimpy latch he is holding shut.

Sam sighs. "You know, if your first reaction wasn't just to break things, Dean…"

"Shut up and hold it still," Dean tells him.

Sam goes and takes his brother's place holding the broken door shut, while Dean steps around the shattered pieces of the busted jade lion lying in front of Cas's door.

He takes a deep breath and rests his palm against the edge, just like he had earlier.

The door clicks open, just like that.

Sam looks triumphant. "I knew it!"

Castiel steps out into the hallway, looking more ruffled than usual.

"You all right, Cas?" Dean demands, gruffly relieved, while Sam preens to himself off to the side. He glances over the angel once, quickly, to assess any harm that might have come to him.

Castiel nods once. "I'm fine."

Dean's gruff relief turns to annoyance as he looks at his brother. "So? What the hell was the point of all that?"

Sam shrugs. "I still don't even know where we are, Dean."

Castiel looks grim. "I do," he announces, sounding weary and wary all at once. "And if _he_ has us, then I would imagine everything we do here has a purpose, however clouded it may appear to us at the moment."

Dean is completely at zero patience levels for roundabout explanations and theories at this point. "Well?" he asks. "Wanna share with the class, Cas?"

Castiel straightens his coat a little and nods. "Have either of you ever heard the story of the _Journey to the West_?"

A beat.

"We covered some of it in World Lit one semester," Sam admits tentatively, at the exact moment Dean blinks and says, "That movie about the Russian mouse?"

Sam and Cas both deign to ignore this comment, which makes Dean wonder (not for the first time) if the geek squad would prefer it if he went outside while they had their tea party alone.

"I believe," Castiel murmurs, voice low, "that we are in the palace of the Eastern Dragon Emperor."

Dean stares. "Are you telling me we all got _roofied_ by a dragon?" he demands incredulously.

Before either his brother or his whatever can answer, a figure materializes in the shadows behind them and clears his throat gently.

"I believe my grandfather would prefer the term _summoned_ ," the newcomer says, sounding vaguely amused.

He is slightly less amused when Dean's first instinct is to turn around and punch him in the face.

  


Castiel lunges for Dean right after the initial blow lands, wrapping his arms around Dean's waist and pulling him bodily backwards, before he can attempt to pummel the life out of Ao Guang's envoy and ignite a war while they are still very trapped within the confines of the Crystal Palace. "Dean no!" he and Sam say at the exact same moment, and Dean gives almost instantly, turning in Castiel's arms to give him a look halfway between bewilderment and indignation.

"That's the delivery guy that tried to date rape us!" he protests in defense of his sudden violence.

The newcomer, still reeling from the rather solid blow to his jaw, frowns and wipes a trickle of blood from the corner of his lip. "It was not," he begins, but gets cut off by Dean's surly expression. The one that says he's getting another solid sock to his person if he tries to dress it up any. He sighs. "It was a sleeping draught," he admits, a little helplessly. "Grandfather wished to bring you here as quietly as possible."

Dean opens his mouth to protest again, by rote, but Castiel cuts him off, stepping between Dean and the young man who had delivered their food from a Chinese restaurant called the Emperor's Pearl the night before. "Why has Ao Guang summoned us?" he demands as he recalls the perfect circumstances that had led them here, from Dean delighting in the ad they'd found tethered to their motel room door, to calling the restaurant for delivery after seeing the "Show us an out-of-state license plate and receive fifty percent off your order!" special that had been promised in somewhat gaudy purple script across the front of the flier.

Castiel supposes that never has a creature of legend laid a more perfect trap for a Winchester. Food, convenience, and economy, all in one fell swoop, and they had fallen into Ao Guang's clutches without so much as an inkling of something being amiss.

But then again, they are in the realm of a very wily, very ancient, and very dangerous creature. Best then to discover what it is the Dragon Emperor wants.

The messenger looks reluctant to divulge that information, looking down at his feet in a surprisingly human gesture for one who calls one such as Ao Guang "grandfather." He is still wearing the uniform of the Emperor's Pearl, complete with nametag that reads, "Hai" on it, which Dean had found inexplicably comedic the night before when he had been greeting and taking leave of the young man. Castiel still doesn't see why the joke had been so funny; Dean had been pronouncing the delivery boy's — Ao Guang's _grandson's_ — name incorrectly both times he'd done it.

"For now, sirs," Hai says carefully, but in a well-mannered tone, "his majesty only wishes to dine with you." Pause. "He invites you to his table as honored guests," he adds hastily the minute Dean looks like he's going to protest eating _anything_ any of these bastards want to feed him again.

Dean doesn't seem to get the promise within those words however, and starts up again, straining to shove past Castiel and give the messenger a piece of his mind.

Castiel stays him with a gentle hand on his arm and a not-so-gentle expectant look in his eye.

The protest dies in a gurgle in Dean's throat unexpectedly. Though, Castiel thinks, it is likely more out of confusion regarding the angel's strange conduct than out of any wish to behave. Sam, at the very least, seems content to err on the side of caution for the time being and follow Castiel's lead.

"Tell his majesty," Castiel begins, turning very pleasantly (if somewhat coolly) to Hai, "that we would be delighted to share a meal with him."

Hai bows stiffly and gestures them to precede him down the long hallway. "If you please."

Castiel pauses to squeeze Dean's arm, just for a moment, before straightening his shoulders and leading the way down the hall. Dean still looks wary, but relaxes visibly at the gesture. Castiel lets his fingers linger just a little longer than necessary before he moves to follow Hai down the corridor.

  


Even the ridiculous good-food smells and the fact that the Dragon Emperor's dining room alone looks like it could hold three of Bobby's place right inside, Dean's primary point of interest at the moment is definitely the fact that Cas has stopped acting like Cas suddenly, and seems to be acting a whole lot more like he's back in commanding general mode, all stiff lines and detached confidence.

In fact, it's concerning enough that Dean isn't even focusing on the strange, girly slippers Hai had presented to them before he'd taken them here. Comfortable, sure, but it feels strange to not be wearing his work boots while marching into the line of fire.

Or, as the case may be, into the really fancy dining room with the crystal chandeliers and the high-backed silk-cushioned chairs.

At the head of one long dining table is an old man, sitting pleasantly enough and clearly waiting for them. He smiles toothily at his guests and stands to greet them, long white whiskers pulling back to either side of his face as he grins, eyes crinkling to the sides slightly. "Welcome, welcome!" he calls, for all the world sounding like he is waving in old friends and not three men whom he'd had to drug to get here the night before.

"You honor us with your hospitality, Ao Guang," Castiel says with as pleasant an air as he is capable of given the circumstances. Which means he sounds downright neutral at best.

Sam and Dean take the moment to share an apprehensive look. If this guy is a _Dragon Emperor_ he definitely doesn't look it.

Then again, in the Winchester handbook of survival, that probably means he can eat their faces off from fifty yards away or something.

Ao Guang's eyes glint as if reading their thoughts, but he betrays no more interest in them than that as he gestures to the empty chairs around him. "Please," he says pleasantly. "Have a seat. The first course is ready to be served."

Dean looks him over belligerently. "If it's anything like what you set us up for last night, I bet we're in for a real party."

Ao Guang's grin broadens, if possible, but it's shark-like and just shy of chilling. "Believe me, Mr. Winchester," he says, pleasantly enough, "I always seek to outdo myself."

" _Dean_ ," Castiel cuts in sharply and gestures to a chair. "Just sit. Please."

"Yes, _dear_ ," Dean grudgingly does as he's told, because Cas usually doesn't take that tone with him and he's not really sure what else to do but listen. Doesn't mean he has to like it, though.

This earns him a blatantly amused look from Ao Guang. Dean glares back and takes a freaking seat.

Once all of his guests are seated, Ao Guang sits down as well and claps his hands together once.

And then, just like that, a sea of servants drifts in out of nowhere, carrying the first course of cold meats on elegant platter. They bow and set them down on the table as Ao Guang does the honor of pouring each of the Winchesters and their angel a cup of fragrant tea.

It is while the first course is being served this way, Dean staring at the food and clearly wondering what ninety percent of it is, when Sam suddenly gives a start.

"What?" Dean demands when he sees the light go on behind his younger brother's eyes for the umpteenth time since they've gotten here. Meanwhile, Castiel keeps up his very pleasant façade of good manners.

"It's just," Sam whispers, and he takes on that tone that makes him sound all of ten years old again, when he used to hiss under his breath at Dean that Dad was such a _jerk_ , "I think these people are the ones we're looking for."

Dean blinks and finally takes his eyes off the questionable cold meat in front of him to actually look the servants in the face. He's surprised to find that he recognizes most of them, and not at all surprised to find that Sam had recognized them first.

Dean turns to Ao Guang with an intense sensation of rage at the sight of these people, all of whom had been reported missing after witnesses had seen them relaxing lakeside, fishing, or boating, or sometimes swimming. "What the hell is this?" Dean demands suddenly, interrupting Cas and the Dragon Emperor's pointless conversation on the quality of the jasmine in the tea or whatever.

"Jellyfish," Castiel explains and dishes out some of the weird, noodly-looking shiny stuff on the platter to Dean's plate. "The flavor is very unique."

Dean scowls because Cas is weird on most days, but he's being particularly weird today, just because they're sitting down to dinner with evil monster royalty or whatever. It's not like Dean hasn't killed a dragon before. "No, I mean the people. Cas, these are the people we read about in the papers, the ones that disappeared."

Castiel sighs at him and keeps serving him more of that gross-looking jellyfish stuff.

Dean is beginning to think Cas has forgotten that they're on a hunt and that all signs point to their roofie-happy host as the absolute perpetrator of the kidnappings.

Strangely enough it is Ao Guang who takes pity on him first.

"These are my servants," he says simply.

"You mean slaves?" Dean counters, standing up from his seat.

"Dean," Castiel begins, a note of warning in his voice. "They are not people."

Dean blinks. "What?"

Ao Guang actually barks in laughter at that. "These, Mr. Winchester," he says, "are my soldiers, who have served me since long before Sun Wukong was given life at the summit of Flower Fruit Mountain."

That makes about zero sense to Dean, but then again, he's thinking this whole wacky adventure is going to be one of those jobs that will make him wish for simpler times. Shooting werewolves, beheading vampires, exorcising demons. The good old days.

Sam, luckily, is there to make sense of a world that has stopped doing so to Dean for the last twenty minutes or so. "It was a set up," he breathes.

"Buh?" Dean manages.

Sam is slightly incredulous. "All of it. Not just the name of the place or the coincidence. I thought maybe…but then it seemed too obvious, but even the _people_? That's…"

"I do try to be thorough," Ao Guang acknowledges around the brim of his steaming cup of tea.

Sam turns to Dean, because Dean really thinks that Chinese food from last night must have done a number on him. "Dean, the whole case, every _part_ of it, was just a way to get us here. No one was hurt. No one is even really _missing_."

Dean's brow furrows. "Well, how the hell do we know that?"

"Think about it," Sam points out. "All the so-called victims? No family reported them missing and no witnesses saw them get pulled under or even disappear. A clerk at the bait store or a fellow tourist could place seeing them at the lake, but couldn't remember their names or where they'd come from. All any of the stories had to let us know anyone had gone missing at all was that the locals got suspicious when these so-called tourists didn't pick up an order they'd paid for or didn't return a rental on time. It was...suspicious, to say the least."

Dean has a headache. "So what, this was just a big ruse to get us here?"

"Yes," Ao Guang answers, unrepentant.

"Try the jellyfish, Dean," Castiel says again with another one of those significant looks.

Dean isn't sure why it's so fucking important to eat all of a sudden, and he loves food. But right now, there seems to be more important matters at hand. Plus the jellyfish looks weird.

"We would not want to insult our host by refusing his kindness," Castiel adds placidly, and with an acknowledging nod to a highly amused Dragon Emperor. Then he continues to eat like nothing is fucking weird about this at all, though he does pinch Dean under the table once, when Dean does nothing but glare. As far as Dean is concerned, it is way harder than necessary.

Totally fucking uncalled for, actually.

Dean's eyes flare in impatient indignation, prompting Castiel to give him another quelling significant look that he doesn't know what the hell to do with. He suddenly feels like he's in some sort of ridiculous Hollywood movie or something. Starring Cas as the anxious girlfriend who is bringing her new boyfriend home for the first time, Ao Guang as the disapproving uncle who is actually some sort of goddamned royalty (surprise!), and Dean Winchester as the guy who has no idea what the fuck is going on.

It's all very _Guess Who's Coming to Dinner_ , except this time Spencer Tracy can probably breathe fire or something.

" _Cas_ ," Dean grits out, in a tone that he thinks is pleasant enough, given the circumstances. "What the _fuck_?"

"Dean," Castiel replies, hard-edged but with just a note of pleading, "you must be very hungry."

Well, he sort of is, but not enough to eat any freaking jellyfish. Especially when he's sitting across from a date-raping dragon.

Ao Guang snorts at the display the two of them are making of themselves. He even seems to take pity on Dean, which raises Dean's hackles even more. "The last time I was insulted," Ao Guang says, conversationally, "I wiped out several port cities in a massive typhoon. All things considered, I would listen to your paramour, Mr. Winchester. The jellyfish really is excellent."

Oh.

Dean sinks back into his seat like a stone and fumbles with his chopsticks to try the jellyfish. Cas stops pinching his leg too, which is nice.

"Mmm?" he manages around the first cold, squishy mouthful.

Cas serves him the cold pork next, complete with a layer of jelly-like fat.

Dean eats it and everything else that gets put on his plate from there on out, mostly because he doesn't want cities to be wiped out, but also because whenever he's about to say ‘ _fuck no, thanks_ ,' to whatever weird-ass food item is on the menu next, Castiel gives him this annoyed-wife look that Dean remembers his mother giving his dad every once in a while, when he forgot to put the seat down after using the bathroom.

Dean starts to worry about what this might mean in terms of his and Cas's whatever. But mostly he hates the fucking fatty pork.

And so they finish the meal in that manner, seven courses later, while an awkward, stilted sort of conversation goes on between the amused Dragon Emperor and his guests (mostly Castiel). They make a bunch of inane comments about the freshness of the water chestnut, or the richness of the broth, or the beautiful flower-cut garnishes alongside their lobster, and Dean has never felt particularly _gay_ until that whole freaking conversation is happening in front of him. Lotus-cut radishes. What the fuck.

It isn't until what seems like a horrible, over-stuffed eternity of food later that Castiel, over a half-eaten portion of almond jelly with fresh fruit topping, finally pushes his plate forward and thanks Ao Guang for the meal and his kindness. Then he _finally_ asks, very straightforwardly, "What is the purpose of your summons, your highness?"

Dean nearly falls forward in relief that this whole weird _Alice in Wonderland_ tea party is coming to a close and they can get back to trying to find their way out of this goddamned rabbit hole. Though he will admit that the almond jelly is really fucking good at the very least, and finishes his and the leftover portions of Cas's as well, just to make sure their host isn't insulted by their lack of interest in dessert. Since Cas seems to care about that a whole lot for whatever reason, and no one wants Minnesota to be wiped off the map because someone didn't like the big mean dragon's expensive dinner party.

In the meantime, Ao Guang's smile fades, his expression turning serious, and his eyes vaguely stormy as he considers how to answer Castiel's question.

Dean hopes this doesn't mean they can kiss Minnesota goodbye now.

"It seems, Castiel," Ao Guang begins, voice a deep rumble as he leans back in his chair, "that I have once again been charged with presenting a challenge to a righteous man and a rebellious son of Heaven as they make their westward pilgrimage."

Dean blinks. "What the hell do you mean, _again_?" He's pretty sure that if he'd met a Dragon Emperor during the apocalypse he would have remembered him. Especially since they seem to come with roofies and so much fucking food.

Ao Guang snorts. "This is a story thousands of years old, Mr. Winchester," he says matter-of-factly. "Much older than you. You all are, at best, the sequel. Perhaps the remake. Those seem to be in fashion these days."

"That makes no sense to me," Dean admits, crossing his arms.

Ao Guang tsks. "They teach nothing in schools these days, I suppose. Especially in this country." He sits back and reaches for an orange on the table, peeling it thoughtfully. "You see, thousands of years ago, Sun Wukong, a powerful warrior born from the union of Heaven and Earth, rebelled against the gods. He gained immortality and frightening power, and with it, defeated the celestial armies of the Jade Emperor until the Buddha himself was forced to strike him down, imprisoning him under the earth for his crimes. And there he would have stayed, if the monk Xuanzang had not heard his voice and sought to free him." Pause. Smirk. "But I digress. I believe Castiel is already familiar with the relevant portions of this story as is."

Dean bristles instinctively. "The hell does any of that crap have to do with us?"

Ao Guang's eyes flash as he turns to look directly at Dean, for once seemingly irritated by the human's constant badgering. "It has everything to do with you, Mr. Winchester," he booms, and Dean swears the ground around them rumbles a little in time with his voice. "The story is universal. History repeats itself. And I am here, before you, however unwillingly, because I must serve a function that my kind began in the times when we first breathed within the waters of this earth, billions of years ago."

"Wait, billions of years? But didn't you just say that the story was only thousands of years old?" Sam pipes up in that detail-oriented way of his.

Ao Guang waves dismissively at that. "The war and the story are not related. Just as the places and the circumstances have not always been the same. The only constant is the players. This enemy you face, like the demons Sun Wukong and Xuanzang faced on their own journey, are my enemies as well. We have fought them in cycles, warred for ages from one universe to another, from this realm to all others. You are the pieces on the board now, you and this rebellious angel, Sun Wukong and Xuanzang before you, and a thousand other names and people and lifetimes from now as well, until Death sees fit to reap time itself."

"That makes no sense," Dean insists stubbornly.

Ao Guang's nostrils flare. "That is because you are too puny to truly understand the scope of the war you have rekindled!" he snaps angrily, and for a second Dean can see a flash of fangs and hear the sound of a thousand storms crackling in the distance.

"Grandfather, please, calm down," Hai intones meekly from one of the far corners, stepping forward to implore the Dragon Emperor to stop the earth from shaking apart beneath them and swallowing them whole.

Ao Guang sighs and sits back. "Yes, forgive me, Hai." He takes a moment then to close his eyes and compose himself again.

"So you see," he murmurs after several minutes pass. "You are who you are, and we are where we will always be. I had hoped this fight would be far in the making, but it has been brought to our doors again in this time and age."

Sam looks immensely weirded out, but not in a necessarily bad way so much as a curious way. "So you're saying Cas represents Sun Wukong and Dean represents Xuanzang and this…this has all happened before? That the story is true?"

"Yes," Ao Guang says simply.

Dean is not as complacent as his brother. "I am not some monk," he protests, however ineffectually.

"Dean, don't you see?" Castiel asks, remembering the story of Xuanzang's visit to the Eastern Dragon Emperor's Palace, mind racing back to the images carved onto the wall of his room. "This means that Ao Guang is here to help us."

"That," Ao Guang murmurs, "remains to be seen. I can only help you if you are wise enough to help yourself."

"Well, that is some useless fortune cookie bullshit if I ever heard it," Dean scoffs.

Some of the mirth returns to Ao Guang's eyes. "Speaking of which…" He trails off and claps his hands again, spurring a servant — a young boy with mischievous dimples — to stumble forward, carrying a small platter of very familiar looking cookies. "Let us end our meal in a way you are accustomed," the Dragon Emperor says and gestures to the fortune cookies on the table.

Sam's eyebrows dart up at the sight of them, but he goes ahead and takes one obligingly. "I thought these weren't even Chinese," he notes as he cracks his in half.

Ao Guang shrugs and takes up his own fortune cookie with relish. "Adapting with the times is what separated my people from those who had to be locked away. We endured Heaven's squabbles, embraced humanity's determination to survive, and desired nothing more than to live peacefully and in good fortune with those we held dear. With those principles comes a certain willingness to acknowledge that as stupid as your kind is, you are not entirely without your creative merit as well."

"Okay then," Sam allows as Dean picks up his fortune cookie and nudges the last one on the plate towards Cas.

Sam pulls out his fortune first and reads it out loud. "The trick to finding the things you've lost is to look where you last saw them."

"Talk about obvious," Dean snorts and pulls the little slip of paper out of his cookie at the same time Cas does. He looks expectantly at the angel, who sighs and reads his as well.

"When one door closes, another door opens," he says, and then, as if remembering something important, reluctantly adds, "…in bed."

Dean sort of regrets teaching Cas that game the night before, but then again, by the way both Ao Guang and Sam's eyebrows reach their hairlines, maybe regret is not what he's feeling at all. Maybe he's just realizing (not for the first time) that Cas is awesome.

Grinning, Dean reads his next. "An enlightened individual is one who knows his own true value." Pause. "In bed." He waggles his eyebrows and tosses the paper onto the tabletop.

"Charming," Ao Guang comments.

"What about yours?" Dean asks the Dragon Emperor, who holds his in his hand but makes no move to read it.

"Mine is not yet determined," he admits cheerfully, and with a note of finality that dares any of his guests to press the issue. "Can I offer you any more tea?"

Both Winchesters look at each other suspiciously at this dismissal, but before either can devise a ploy to ask more about it, Hai steps out of the shadows again.

"Excuse me, Grandfather," he says, glancing down at his wrist watch. "It's almost time."

"Time for what?" both Sam and Dean say in perfect, wary tandem.

Ao Guang grunts and nods, pausing to wipe his mouth with a napkin before standing again. "Well, gentlemen," he says, "now that you have partaken of my food, as guests of my house, I am afraid this old host of yours has a particular favor to ask of you." He smiles.

No one there who sees that smile is fooled into believing that the Dragon King is _asking_ them anything.

  


Hai leads them down another series of long, winding hallways, past and up spiraling wood-carved staircases and through enormous rooms filled with treasure and weapons and some really old looking furniture. Outside, through the large glass looking windows spaced throughout the palace, they can see fish swimming lazily by, not paying the least bit of mind to the strange structure currently inhabiting the bottom of their lake.

Castiel and Ao Guang drop behind the party, exchanging pointless pleasantries, Castiel commenting on this painting from the whatever-century or that sword from the book-of-something-something. Sam, of course, is listening with rapt attention, interjecting every so often with admiration or disbelief. It reminds Dean of when Sam was five and they'd been on that one hunt in California for the first time, Dad taking a drive past Disneyland one night so Sam could see the tops of the castle peeking out from behind the fence. They'd parked at one of the nearby motels briefly so Sammy could see the fireworks for free, and he hadn't stopped asking questions about how they managed to make all those shapes and colors for the rest of the night.

Nerd forever, his little brother.

Eventually growing bored of the gibberish the geek patrol is spouting to the old guy, Dean turns his curiosity to the young man in the outlandish delivery uniform in front of him. The guy had called Ao Guang _grandfather_ earlier, but when he'd stopped by with the food last night, Cas hadn't so much batted an eye in the kid's direction except to tell Dean that fifteen percent of their check was $3.75 and twenty percent was an even $5. "So," he begins, when curiosity gets the better of him, "you a…Dragon Emperor too? Or you just call the old guy grandfather because he likes it?"

Hai eyes him back, looking slightly surprised that he is being addressed and not punched in the face again. "He is my grandfather. But I'm not a dragon. Well, not mostly," he answers after a beat in which he seems to decide that Dean isn't going to attack him again. "I mean, I call him grandfather, but he's actually my maternal great grandfather, several times over. I'm…mostly human, actually." He pauses to think about it. "Probably…ninety-five percent by this generation?"

Dean is pretty struck by that, though why it matters, he's not exactly sure. "What, so…dragons and people have been uh, you know…" he trails off and makes a vague hand gesture, feeling inexplicably embarrassed to say it out loud.

Hai grins a little toothily at that, like he understands exactly why Dean is embarrassed, and it's at that moment when Dean can see the family resemblance between him and his grandfather exactly, no matter how many generations might be between them. "The Dragon Emperors and their descendants learned how to live alongside the humans a long time ago. Most of their descendants left the protection of the Crystal Palace after falling in love with mortals. They gave up their immortality to live with humanity. And that's how I exist, basically."

"What a trade off," Dean snorts when he turns that around in his head for a bit. As far as he can tell, it's basically like preemptively winning every argument you might have with a spouse _ever_. "I didn't feel like taking out the trash because I'm tired from work," seems like a pretty lame excuse in the face of, "You better take it out because I gave up everything I was for you. Like cool powers and living _forever_."

Dean suddenly gets a sinking feeling that he's never going to win another fight with Cas ever again.

"So uh, if you're mortal — or mostly — what the hell are you doing here?" Dean prompts Hai next, sharply steering his mind from those kinds of pointless thoughts as they turn towards a staircase that looks a lot less fancy than all the others. It smells damp and moldy in this part of the palace, like it must have sprung a leak about a hundred years ago or something and no one bothered to fix it.

"All of my family members have to answer grandfather's summons whenever he calls us," Hai answers after a moment, looking like he kind of hates that whole aspect about being part-dragon. "He's the patron guardian of my family, so it wouldn't be smart to blow him off."

"I'm getting it wouldn't be smart to piss him off whether you're related to him or not," Dean adds, and he kind of knows how that goes with family. Then, intrigued, he feels the need to ask, "How'd that interspecies thing work anyway? Did your mom ever threaten to eat your dad if he cheated or something?" Talk about an uneven balance of power.

Hai shrugs noncommittally. "Maybe a few times, but it worked out in the end. My parents are actually pretty gross around one another," he confides, wrinkling his nose at the memory. "Really, the biggest problem they have is that dad gets a little weirded out by the fact that mom can make it rain whenever she wants. On the other hand, mom is weirded out by the fact that dad likes to eat shellfish, because all of grandfather's servants are part crustacean. But you know, they deal."

Dean snorts. "That simple, huh?"

"It probably helps that dad never has to come visit grandfather like mom and me."

That makes sense, he supposes. Cas is great, sure, but his family sucks big time. In fact, if Dean never had to deal with Cas's family in the first place, he's at a comfortable enough place with himself at this point to be pretty sure that it wouldn't have taken so many years to kiss the guy.

Hell, all things equal, minus Cas's douchebag relatives, they might have even had time to hit a couple out of the park by now.

This strange (but not entirely unwelcome, if he's being honest) turn of Dean's thoughts is interrupted when they reach the top of the musty staircase and his foot meets the carpet there with a wet, gross-sounding _squelch_.

"The hell?" he mutters and looks down at soggy red carpet that smells like week-old unwashed gym socks.

Ao Guang sighs in a disappointed sort of way as the rest of the party comes up the stairs and takes in the length of soggy hall and the dank, rotting smells in the air. "Part of this palace is above water," he begins, continuing down the corridor like this ruin isn't news to him or anything. "It peeks above an underground cave, and was a favorite place for my children to play once a long time ago. It was, until very recently, also a favorite haunt of my great grandsons and granddaughters today, when they would come to visit. There are many beautiful minerals in the rocks around the cave and the formations are quite diverting for them, you see." He gets a bit of nostalgic glint in his eye, as if remembering something from a long time ago. "This wing originally belonged to my first daughter and has been maintained over these past thousand years in perfect accordance with how she had kept it when she lived under my protection and the protection of the elder gods."

Dean isn't sure where this is going. Maybe Ao Guang has some sort of dastardly ploy to expose them all to toxic mold long enough to kill them with toxic mold lung cancer or something.

"What happened to her?" Sam asks, a natural air of curiosity in his voice that should be offensive since this is none of his business, but never seems to be taken that way because he manages to put just the right amount of sympathy alongside it.

Ao Guang shakes his head a little. "She threw in her lot with a human man and shed the protection of her ancestors to live as a mortal. This is all I have left of her."

"But it's been…flooding like this?" Sam asks, more sensitively than Dean would have.

Ao Guang nods. "The last time I had visitors such as yourselves, the eastern pillar of my palace was ripped from the ground and taken away. This of course, shifted the foundations of the palace considerably, though not enough that the water was a threat to this section of the grounds." Pause. Sigh. "But recently, the waters have become much more violent, and they now rise much higher than they might naturally be inclined to. It is enough to cause this particular wing of the palace to flood when the tide washes in every day. The entire wing becomes submerged during the full moon tide, as if we were in the ocean itself again."

He continues walking for a length of time after that, and Dean notices that the deeper they go in, the more water there is, enough now that it's starting to make more puddly, _splash_ sounds under their feet than the wet _squelches_ from earlier.

Dean doesn't think this makes sense. "What, so just because part of your palace wasn't underwater you didn't build a door or a wall or something, to keep other stuff out?" That just sounds like some shoddy design work if he's ever heard it. And he thought he'd seen some stupid shit, that year he'd worked construction in Cicero.

Ao Guang gives him a look full of reproach. "Of course there was a door, Mr. Winchester. However, after Sun Wukong removed the pillar and took it with him as a weapon, the resulting shift in alignment it caused my palace has made the door at the end of this hallway virtually impossible to close. None amongst those who serve me, in any case, has been capable of shutting it properly, particularly in time to save this wing against the rising waters. And we find that with each passing day, the reach of the water grows farther and much more destructive. If this problem is not rectified soon, the entire riches of my palace will eventually be destroyed by the tide. All of the treasures I keep here will be washed away."

He shifts his gaze to Castiel then, in a gesture Dean does not like one little bit. "And so this is the favor I have to ask of your party," he says to the angel, though loudly enough that it echoes throughout the damp walls of the hallway, sounding for all the world like some sort of imperial command. "Castiel, as one who has challenged the order of Heaven much as Sun Wukong did, I feel only you are in possession of the strength necessary to close a door that has lain open for much too long, and at great risk to myself and those who serve me."

Castiel considers this. "This is the favor you ask of me?"

Ao Guang's eyes twinkle. "Yes. Please help us close this great door and keep out the water."

Something weird is clearly happening here, because for such simple words, the strange looks the Dragon Emperor and the angel are giving each other don't really match at all. Plus Dean is confused. "Aren't you like a freaking giant dragon? Why can't you shut the damn door yourself?"

" _Dean_ ," Cas and Sam say at exactly the same time, and in exactly the same way. Dean is beginning to think that dating Cas is a lot like dating Sam, only a lot less gross and incestuous. And he gets to be taller.

"What?" he barks back, and prompts the two nerdlings to look at each other, come to some sort of silent agreement, and then mentally play a game of rock-paper-scissors to see who gets to take Dean aside.

Sam loses (which is a total first), and before long, his brother is giving the Dragon Emperor a sheepish smile and then grabbing Dean by the arm and pulling him back a little bit.

Dean scowls. "Dude, stop giving me that look. This is fishy, Sam. Like, literally fishy."

Sam looks so put upon. "Okay look, in the original _Journey to the West_ , from what I remember, Ao Guang challenged Sun Wukong to move the unmovable pillar in his palace and when he did it, Ao Guang rewarded Sun Wukong with impenetrable armor and the pillar as a weapon to use against the demon armies when they left. If what Ao Guang said earlier about being charged to help us is true, then this is the challenge this time, and the prize might be something we can use to stop…whatever is going on."

Dean blinks. His first instinct is to be incredibly unimpressed with what they are being charged to accomplish. "Move a pillar, close a door? That really the best he could come up with? It's like the pointless fortune cookies all over again, man."

"Look," Sam sighs, looking tired from the wear and tear of this whole situation and hopeful that the magical Dragon Emperor is about to give them the key to blowing this whole thing open. "It's something we _have_ to try, Dean. Everything he's telling us points to whatever it is causing the dark omens and strange events around the world...and it's getting _worse_. I mean, a tide on a lake shouldn't be able to change the water level more than maybe two inches. If whatever is affecting the oceans is getting to the fresh water now it can't be good."

"I still don't like it," Dean mutters back. Maybe he's just not a fan of dragons, considering.

But before he can turn to Cas and voice this opinion much more loudly (and obnoxiously, probably), Cas bows once to Ao Guang and says, without hesitation, "It would be my great honor to do this for you."

Fucking angel.

"Excellent!" Ao Guang says around a huge smile. He leads them around a corner next, hand outstretched. "Here then, is the door I wish for you to close."

And when they see it, Dean thinks that maybe this might not be so bad after all.

Because in front of him is an average, if somewhat ornately-decorated glass door, trimmed in gold and no heavier looking than one of the sliding glass numbers one might find at a 7-11.

Ao Guang glances down at the water that's starting to trickle in faster now, so that Dean can actually see the flow of it on top of the carpet like a very small, shallow stream. "The moon is, of course, full tonight, and time is of the essence," the Dragon Emperor intones pleasantly. "I believe the hallway will be completely submerged within the hour."

"Well all right then," Dean says, feeling strangely optimistic all of a sudden. Cas is like fucking Superman, and the door kind of looks like a Spiderman villain, at best. He turns to grin at the angel. "Like candy from a baby, right?"

  


Despite the deceptively normal appearance of the door, Castiel is not as sure that it will be as easy as Dean seems to think it will be. But if he is confident about anything, it is that Ao Guang, if he is indeed here to help them, would not charge him with a task that is wholly impossible. This even seems somewhat less formidable a task than ripping a giant pillar from the ground, as Sun Wukong had done in the old stories.

Castiel, of course, is not as strong as he once was, but if he has learned anything from the Winchesters, it is that sometimes simply trying is enough.

So, he squares his shoulders, wraps his fingers around the door's massive handle, and begins to _push_.

"Seriously?" Dean asks in surprise, after a beat.

"It is much heavier than it looks, Dean," Castiel informs him.

Dean considers this for a moment, before turning back to Ao Guang. "What did you do to it?"

"Nothing," the Dragon Emperor says with some acerbity.

Castiel continues to strain against the door. It is completely ineffectual.

"This is bullshit," Dean insists, after watching him for a few moments. "And no offense, man, but this place is shot anyway. Just close one of the other doors we passed earlier, save what's left, and call it a day."

"This place," Ao Guang answers in a low rumble, "is, as you say, rendered somewhat shoddy by the events of the last few months, but I assure you, Mr. Winchester, I find it well worth trying to save even now."

At Castiel's feet, the flow of water suddenly seems much higher, much faster than it had been before he'd laid a hand on the door, as if the liquid is conscious of the fact that the Dragon Emperor wishes to shut it out. It rushes past his ankles in a chilling, murky swell, wetting the cuffs of his jeans and rendering his feet as cold and soggy as the ancient artifacts Ao Guang displays here: the beautiful wooden fans, the ornate tasseled swords, the priceless vases, silks, and tapestries.

They are all, himself included, rendered a little shoddy by the past few months Castiel knows, but yes, still worth saving perhaps, if someone desires it enough.

He pushes harder and groans into the effort, wings unfurling on either side of him for balance, flapping slightly to add greater force to his hands. The door slides forward under the added power, but only by millimeters. The water on the other side, flowing in faster still, pushes back against him with equal force, eager to slip inside the Crystal Palace and devour all the beautiful things inside. Castiel pauses to wipe sweat from his brow, and this time, releases the handle completely so that he can throw his shoulder into the body of the door itself.

The ground shakes and the walls rattle upon impact.

But the door still refuses to budge.

He keeps trying.

  


"If Cas can't do it, then it's friggin' impossible," Dean insists sometime later, after watching the angel straining helplessly against the rising water that now reaches almost midway up their shins.

"Perhaps," Ao Guang answers obligingly, and with an impeccable sort of judgmental calm that makes Dean want to slug him.

Dean manages to hold back, just barely. His knuckles still kind of sting from punching Hai earlier, and he's not sure what punching a Dragon Emperor will do to his hand. "What happens if he fails?" he asks instead, civilly enough, but also with enough fire behind it to let Ao Guang know he's _thinking_ about punching him.

"I imagine," Ao Guang answers, sounding bored with Dean's idiotic bravado, "the water will rush in and everyone who cannot breathe underwater here will drown." Pause. "Meaning you, your brother, and depending on how much strength he has left, Castiel, to a degree. The doors to the inner chambers will have to be sealed soon, to keep the water out of there for as long as we may. If either of you lack faith, perhaps you should retreat there and await a verdict."

Dean's tenuous hold on his temper snaps at this point, and even Sam is looking like maybe he's regretting this whole ordeal despite the fancy treasures he seems to think are waiting for them on the other side of this screwed-up rainbow. "What the _fuck_?" Dean demands of the Dragon Emperor loudly. "I thought you were here to help us! How does drowning us help us?"

"I said I was here to present a challenge," Ao Guang answers evenly.

Dean glares. "You're a _dick_ ," he shoots back, because he's too angry to be clever so much as completely honest right now.

From where he is straining mightily against the door, his whole back pushed flush against it, Castiel manages to glare at Dean. "You are giving me a headache, Dean. If you are going to yell, I suggest you return to the inner palace and do it where it will not bother me," he chastises, and with just that, somehow manages to make Dean feel all of two-inches tall. Then he gets annoyed, because since when the fuck can Cas do that to him, with just a look, or a few words, or that note of _something_ in his voice?

"I'm going to yell until you cut this shit out, and we don't _drown_ because of some sadistic giant snake!" Dean yells back. It isn't the first time (and probably won't be the last time) that Dean has caused Castiel's head to hurt.

Ao Guang just lets out a rough bark of laughter at that. "Yes, and that is also part of his job, Castiel," he says, like there's some sort of private joke in that whole exchange that only he seems to get. "That is also part of the story, isn't it?"

Dean doesn't think the bastard is funny, and shows how not hilarious this all is to him by finally losing his temper at the sound of the old man's mirth, unceremoniously grabbing the Dragon Emperor by the front of his fancy robe and slamming him against the wall. Beside his shoulder, a display of swords resting atop a gilded table rattles violently and one of the wooden fans hanging on the wall hits the ground with a wet, sloppy splash. "What the hell are you playing at?" Dean demands hotly while Sam moves to intervene, only to have Hai step in his way, looking surprisingly menacing for such a little guy. Dean is pretty sure his enormous brother can take on some five-percent proof dragon blood if he managed to fucking overpower the devil, so he concentrates on grandpa douchebag for the time being. "This isn't your stupid story," he hisses at Ao Guang darkly. "Cas isn't Donkey Kong or whatever, and we're not in a roleplaying game here for your friggin' amusement!"

For a moment, Ao Guang looks at him with complete seriousness, with the kind of eyes that finally seem to scream at Dean about how old this creature is, how powerful. It reminds him a lot of the first time he'd met Cas in that barn, a small package that packed a lot of punch. He nearly drops the old man, but forces himself to remain firm, to not look away.

"You are half right, Mr. Winchester," Ao Guang allows after a moment of just looking at each other, sizing each other up, and, Dean thinks, _judging_ each other. "This is not a game. And this is not — nor has it ever been — Sun Wukong's story, even if he is universally held as the most interesting character of the party. We do, however, find ourselves in a situation that demands a little roleplay from each participant."

Dean has no idea what all that stuff about Sun Wukong means, and to be perfectly honest, he's a little sick of always feeling like he's in the "play your role" boat while at the mercy of some crazy super-powered deity or whatever. He shakes the Dragon Emperor a little. "The last time some asshole told me that? Was to end the world," he growls. "How the hell do we know you're not pushing the same buttons?"

Ao Guang looks patently affronted at the accusation that he is just like pre-Casa Erotica Gabriel, but doesn't have to dignify the accusation with an answer, because that is about the moment when Sam shouts, "Dean, we're running out of time!"

And that is when the red around the edges of Dean's vision dims just enough for him to realize that they are suddenly knee-deep in the water and that the door Castiel is straining so mightily against seems to be _opening wider_ now, under the onslaught of the tide rushing in around them.

They definitely won't make it at this rate.

Ao Guang, still held fast by Dean's fists to the wall, looks thoughtful. "That does seem like a heavier burden than I'd initially imagined," he allows, magnanimously. "Perhaps if the angel had some help?"

Dean turns back to him incredulously. "I can _help_?"

Ao Guang shrugs. "I never said you couldn't."

Sam is the one who is confused now. "But I thought the challenge was for Cas."

And this is where that mysterious look creeps back into the old dragon's eyes, the one that had nearly stilled Dean earlier, with all of its hidden power rippling right under the surface. "The challenge as I remember it," Ao Guang says frostily, "was for Castiel to use his strength to open the door."

Dean lets out a frustrated grunt. "What does that even mean?" he growls. "Why can't you just say what you mean?!"

"I say exactly what I mean," Ao Guang booms back. "Don't presume that because you don't understand what I say there is no meaning behind what I tell you, you ignorant _child_."

Sam grabs Dean by the arm at that point, forcing him to release his hold on Ao Guang. " _Dean_ ," he says, and seems to understand more than Dean does at this point, which always seems to be the case these days, "just go help Cas."

Dean nods, because right. Priorities. He does stop to give Ao Guang one last, dark look though, before he's off, sloshing through the water to Cas's side and throwing his shoulder into the door beside the angel.

He'll punch a dragon in the face later.

He'll probably break his hand, but it will totally be worth it.

  


When Dean joins him at the door, splashing and cursing and slamming his shoulder against the hard surface with a painful sounding thud, Castiel's first instinct is to glare at him and demand, "What are you doing?" in what he realizes is a very Dean-like manner.

Dean forces a grin around the cold, wet misery of the hallway and says, "Looked like you could use a hand, is all," in that overly cavalier manner he only uses when he is trying to frighten away his own doubts and fears.

"Dean," Castiel begins, exasperated, worried, and about to demand that he take his brother back towards the inner palace, where it is warm and dry and the gates of Ao Guang's stronghold will still hold fast against the onslaught of the lake.

But before he can, Dean grunts, gives a mighty push, and miraculously, the door slides forward again, however infinitesimally.

Dean looks just as surprised as Castiel feels when they see that. "Huh. Guess you just gotta push with the legs, Cas," Dean grins, looking hopeful for a moment. Castiel feels it too, the hope in those eyes, and it lasts until he realizes that the water is thigh-deep now, and that more is coming down from the dark depths beyond the door at an increasing rate. He redoubles his efforts to push again, as does Dean, and when they work together like that, the door grinds one tiny inch closer to finally shutting.

"We might actually pull this off," Dean says, though he sounds slightly out of breath when he speaks, as if each great heave he gives in the chilling waters saps too much of his strength to allow him to sound properly convinced of his own inappropriately casual attitude.

At this rate, Dean and Sam will drown. Castiel should have known that deals with creatures such as Ao Guang are double-edged swords at best. He has made a similar mistake once already.

The fact that Ao Guang had trapped him, from the very beginning, in a room with no door might have been an indicator that the Dragon Emperor may not exactly have their best interests at heart.

If not for Sam's insight and Dean's stubborn resolution, he might still be there now, might have stayed there for an eternity, trapped under Ao Guang's spells and charms to suffer out a punishment for his crimes against all living things.

It had all been, as Dean might say, a big _freaking_ sign.

Unless, Castiel realizes, suddenly, in a flash of unexpected thought, it was not meant to be a sign at all.

The room had only seemed to be doorless on first glance. There had been a way out where he did not expect one after all, and Sam and Dean had both been there to free him as well. If Ao Guang had meant to destroy him, why would he have given him the means to escape? Why go through an elaborate plan such as that only to lead him here, to death, if it could have been just as easily achieved the first time around?

No, these things were not signs, it seems. Rather, Castiel is beginning to believe they were meant to serve as a lesson.

Determined, Castiel glances to his left at Dean, who now has his back pressed up against the door and is pushing it with as much strength as he can muster as the water reaches his hip, making it difficult to find purchase on the floor. If they can close off the hallway now, there will be plenty of air beyond the door for Dean and Sam to both last out the duration of high tide. Castiel thinks — or hopes at the very least — that whatever charms or spells Ao Guang uses to keep what is left of his powers from fully manifesting in this place will be weak enough to allow him to at least survive underneath the water from the other side.

Decision thus made, Castiel waits until Dean is too busy pushing to watch him, and then slips through the open doorway to the other side. He does not waste a moment before grabbing the handle there and _pulling_ , just as Dean turns in time to see him on the wrong side of the glass. He chokes out a surprised, almost betrayed, "What the _hell_ , Cas?!" and stares at the angel in accusatory horror.

Castiel ignores him in favor of pulling harder, and before Dean can say or do anything more, the door slides shut with a great, shuddering slam. It is deceptively easy. Perhaps it had never really been broken at all.

In the distance, Castiel can hear the dark rush of lake water come barreling straight towards him.

  


"Cas?! Cas, _what the fuck_?!" Dean shouts as the door rumbles shut between them, trapping Castiel on the wrong side and right in the path of the oncoming water. Dean grabs the door handle from his side, yanking desperately at it and cursing the angel as the world's biggest _moron_.

"Can you hold your breath?" Dean demands, slamming an angry palm against the door once. "Do you know if you can drown?!"

  


"I'm not sure," Castiel says honestly, completely unapologetic and looking like he's learned _nothing_ after the last few months. "But I have a higher likelihood of surviving than you or Sam."

"I'm coming over there _right now_ , and I'm going to wring your stupid neck!" Dean shoots back, too enraged by this stunt to be sensible.

He spins around and sloshes towards the wall opposite Ao Guang, tearing a long, ornately tasseled spear from its mount on the wall and turning the blunt, metallic end towards the door.

"Dean, _don't_ ," Castiel protests from the other side, even as Dean returns and slams the hilt of the weapon against the glass with as much force as he can muster.

"Sam, get out of here," Dean calls back, ignoring the angel completely because clearly he should have gotten the fortune in Dean's cookie today. The idiot doesn't know his own value and Dean will be _dead_ before he lets the guy he braved _Purgatory_ for throw himself away on the whims of some Dragon Lord douchebag with a fondness for real-estate destroying monkeys and being a date-raping ass-clown in his free time.

He slams the end of the spear into the glass again, harder this time, right against the edge, hoping to loosen it enough to get it to swing open again, like he had when he'd been trapped behind the strange secret puzzle doors Sam had so much fun figuring out earlier.

From behind him, Ao Guang looks bored. "Is that really your answer to _everything_?" the dragon sighs. "Breaking the door at this point would only serve to give Castiel moments longer, at best, while sealing yours and your brother's fate. Why do it?"

"Shut up," Dean growls and slams his weapon against the door harder still, eyes trained solely on Cas's through the glass in what Dean hopes is an _I don't care if you gave up Heaven for me, we are going to have a very long screaming match about this later_ sort of way. And they are, once he figures out a way to kill a dragon and some part-dragon people things and swim to the surface of a really big lake, all in one deep breath.

Sam, in the meantime, tries to argue with Ao Guang, for whatever reason. "Cas did the task, didn't he?" Sam begins, voice commendably steady in the face of all of this, "when Sun Wukong completed your challenge, you rewarded him. If this is a roleplay, then shouldn't you give Cas his reward, like you did before? We…we don't need a weapon or anything. Just please…save him."

Ao Guang looks at him in disappointment, like Sam had been his last bastion of intelligence in this vastly stupid world, only to succumb to the Idiot Virus in the final moments after all. "I have already granted you everything you need for the journey," the Dragon Emperor snaps, for a moment sounding like he wants to eat them all and be done with the whole affair. "Asking for more is an insult not only to my hospitality, but to my role in all of this."

Sam looks confounded. "The food? Are you talking about the _food_ being what we needed?"

Ao Guang sighs, long and rumbling. "Humans are so very puny sometimes, aren't they, Hai?" he asks his grandson drolly, and Hai grits his teeth a little but does not dare contradict his powerful elder.

Dean isn't nearly as respectful as the poor son-of-a-bitch that has to share blood with the Dragon Emperor. "And apparently dragons are so goddamned full of themselves that they can play games with people's _lives_ like it doesn't matter," he grits out, glaring out of the corner of his eye while he slams the butt of the spear into the glass over and over again. "Cas thought you were going to help us, you prick. He thought staying down here and playing your stupid games would bring something good to this whole mess for the first time because you're _different_. But in the end you're just like all those other dick gods, trying to look good and sound big even though you're just as terrified of what's coming as the people are."

Ao Guang's eyes flare at that, and a blast of cold wind suddenly erupts through the hallway, sending the water around the Dragon Emperor's robes swirling away, parting the liquid like he's fucking Moses or something as he takes an intimidating step towards Dean. "Insolent _child_ ," he thunders, and the earth trembles under their feet, "I have given you every hospitality, every _gift_ that is within the realm of my capability today and still you refuse to _listen_. You and your entire family have rendered this world unlivable through your sheer stubbornness, in never relenting to listen to those who are older and wiser than you. I thought perhaps, at this juncture, you might have learned from those mistakes, but I see now that I was quite wrong. This task, the cleanup of this mess you have made, is far too high above you. The most I can hope for now is that when this Earth is ripped apart, I will die quietly, far away from the traces of your rigid _humanity_."

For a second, Dean thinks Ao Guang is going to reach through the distance between them and snap off his head in one bite, but before long, the Dragon Emperor gives one last, disgusted sniff and turns on his heel, the water swirling in the air around him falling flat again. "Come, Hai," he orders, and strides back down the hallway that they had come from. "We shall leave them to General Xie."

"Who? What?" Dean asks, while Castiel watches the Dragon Emperor and the delivery boy walk away from them like he's still trying to figure out something important.

A creepy, skittering noise slowly coming towards them answers his question. "Sam…" he begins, and Sam doesn't even need to be asked before he goes to the display of swords and grabs the two longest weapons from it.

The water in front of them suddenly explodes upwards and a man in golden armor roars to the surface, attempting to bring down a giant stone hammer right onto Dean's head. Dean assumes, with a hint of terror at the man's red, hard-looking skin, that this must be the General.

"Dean!" Castiel yelps out, though the sound of it is muffled by the water that is starting to rise above his nose on the other side.

Luckily for Dean's skull, Sam manages to tackle Ao Guang's henchman back into the water before he can bring the hammer down on Dean's unprotected skull.

The two of them disappear into the dark, churning liquid for a moment, and that is when Dean starts to panic.

"Sam?!"

An explosion of water towards the left catches Dean's eye. "Get Cas, Dean!" Sam gasps, his massive arms around the hissing General's neck as he uses his greater size to force his opponent back under the surface again. "Go!"

Dean goes back to slamming the butt of the spear against the door, more frantically now.

He notes, with real fear, that the chamber on the other side is suddenly full of water from floor to ceiling and it's dark enough that he can't see the angel clearly anymore. The door, stubbornly, refuses to give, no matter how desperately, how angrily, he pounds against it.

He is like that for what feels like an eternity, trying to get through to where Castiel is waiting for him, perhaps dying for him, all over again.

"Dean!" Sam shouts moments later, and the sound of it is enough to make Dean pause in his desperate, crazed attempts to shatter the massive door that Castiel has disappeared behind. When he turns, Sam is holding General Xie's giant stone hammer, looking exhausted and messy. But he is standing above the motionless, armored body of Ao Guang's soldier as it floats aimlessly in the water, and at least there is some triumph in that. Dean will never stop being in awe of his little brother. "How did you…"

Sam shakes his head, looking as surprised as Dean feels. "I just…I drowned him," the younger Winchester mutters, like he can't believe it either. But then he remembers himself and quickly strides forward, offering the dead General's hammer to his brother. "Try this. Just…hurry."

Dean nods once. "I'll let you know if you need to hold your breath," he says grimly, and pulls the hammer back, prepared to throw the last of his strength into one desperate swing.

He slams the hammer against the glass with a resounding _thud_ that shakes the door. Another one of those ridiculous wooden fans falls off of where it is mounted on the wall.

The door itself does not shatter.

"No," Dean murmurs, at a loss now. "No, no, no… _Cas_!!"

Sam is the one who grabs his shoulder, who sloshes over to him and points upward, not to the point of where the hammer had impacted the glass, but above and around it, where spider-thread thin cracks seem to be spreading outward now, where tiny rivulets of water are starting to stream through. "Dean! Look!!"

Something hopeful rushes through Dean at that moment and he takes the hammer back one last time, nodding at his brother. "Hold your breath, Sammy," he says.

He swings the weapon right into the glass one more time.

And finally, _finally_ , it shatters into a million pieces.

The water from the other side rushes straight at them in a chilling, murky crush.

  


Once the door is closed the water fills up the chamber Castiel is trapped in almost instantaneously. He holds his breath because he does not know what else to do in the situation, because as it is, under the terrible, deep crush of it all, he feels rather human again, despite knowing he is not, at least not completely. On the other side of the glass he can hear the distant thudding of Dean's wasted efforts to destroy a door constructed to withstand all the heat and pressure under the deepest depths of the ocean floors. There is shouting, but it sounds faint, and when Castiel strains, eyes closed and with his hand pressed to the glass, he can feel more than see, Dean's frantic shouting, Sam's desperate thrashing, the chitinous skittering of what must be one of Ao Guang's crab or shrimp assassins, attacking speedily through the water.

It is all very wrong, all in complete opposition of what he had hoped might arise from here. He had believed that perhaps they would walk away from Ao Guang's Crystal Palace much as Xuanzang and his party had thousands of years ago, rich with fantastical weapons and armor to take into battle against the foes that they had yet to face as they journeyed westward.

The Dragon Emperors, he knows, have always been his Father's more sensible creations, if not always entirely fair. Ao Guang may be the type of patriarch who destroys entire civilizations when one person amongst them has wronged him, but it is only after he is _wronged_ that he acts in this way, never simply on a whim.

Nothing Ao Guang chooses to do is just on a whim. The rooms from earlier, the meal, this challenge, they all have to mean something. Perhaps Castiel is showing how truly young he is after all, in being unable to put it together. The answer, he is certain, is here somewhere. The weapon they sought is here somewhere. The way out — as it had been in his doorless room — is here somewhere, if only they will stop to think about it.

The problem is, they might not have time to think about it.

The steady _clang, clang, clang_ of Dean beating at the enormous door, trying to break it down, to free Castiel, even if doing so would mean they all only last a moment longer, pounds against the frantic rush of his thoughts. He tries to puzzle through the pieces they have been given to this riddle, but can't seem to think of anything but the fact that even should Dean succeed, it would only serve to save them all as long as it took for the water to consume the remaining air in the hallway. He does not want Dean to die for him, to even attempt to again. That is unacceptable, and for a very long time, has been the sole thought driving him in every action or deed. It is difficult to put that worry from his mind and try to be a rational beast again, striving to make sense of Ao Guang's final words.

Alongside that is the physical sensation of his lungs beginning to burn. There isn't enough time. He wishes Dean would take Sam and go. The door is closed and there is no reason to open it again, not when all that will result in is the destruction of everything around them.

He is going to die again.

Castiel gives a small start under the water as he feels something brush his cheek; a soft, gently scraping sensation not unlike Dean's fingers against his skin in the morning, when Dean is not awake enough to be fully aware of himself or the tender actions of his body. It is the kind of accidental, unconscious gesture that always makes Castiel's heart stutter in his chest, that makes him open his eyes and feel two parts terrified and one part awed.

And just like then, so do Castiel's eyes snap open now.

There, drifting serenely before him under the water, impossibly intact and clearly visible, is the slip of paper from Ao Guang's fortune cookie, somehow set free from the confines of his pocket and lingering right in front of Castiel's eyes.

" _When one door closes, another door opens_."

Castiel reaches out to grasp the paper in his hand, and it comes away firm and resilient, a message, or perhaps the answer, that Ao Guang had given him for this challenge long before the challenge had actually begun.

And so, for a moment, he turns away from Dean's desperate barrage against the door and looks in another direction altogether, for any door that might have opened when this one had closed.

When he concentrates he can see that there is indeed a light in the distance, faint but unquestionably bright, perhaps too far back for him to reach as the tightness in his chest and his vessel's desire to breathe grows more furious, as the rhythm of Dean trying to break down the door for him begins to sound more like the thrumming of his heart as it starts to panic because the oxygen in this body's blood is depleted and it is slowly starting to die despite his Grace's frantic attempts to keep it moving.

Castiel desperately marshals his strength and swims towards the distant light. If he can reach it in time, then perhaps Dean will not be so angry with him for what he has done afterwards.

He thinks that he can make it. He just needs to go a little further, to hold on a little longer, to try a little more. Just like he had in Hell, when he had searched for Dean's soul. This is a mantra that had served him well, in its own way.

But then, just as he feels something start to warm him in the water, just as his fingertips are close enough to touch the light, he is forcibly yanked backwards again by the sound of shattering glass and the rush of blackened water slamming into him. It brutally forces what little air remains in his lungs from them.

" _Cas_!" he hears in Dean's desperate tones after a moment, and when he turns back towards Dean and away from that mysterious, warm light, he sees both brothers, swept up in the torrential tides, slowly being pulled under by whatever wrath Ao Guang has seen fit to unleash upon them for insolently ignoring his words and blatantly disregarding his gifts.

Castiel tries to reach for Dean as they are swept through the ruined hallway of the Crystal Palace.

But he only grasps more cold, cold water as the two of them are ripped apart by the flood.

There is no more air in his lungs.

And everything is suddenly dark.

  


Sam is the first to wake, sputtering and coughing fiercely as he sits up on the grotesque floral pattern of the motel room's queen-sized bed. He is soaked through the bone and shivering. The room itself is bone dry. It smells like unrefrigerated Chinese leftovers and damp, musty socks.

"Dean? Cas?!" he coughs around the bad-tasting water in his mouth.

A pitiful groan is what he gets in answer, and looking around blearily, he soon makes out Castiel's cold, dripping form slumped over one of the chairs at the table, the angel's nose about a centimeter away from an open container of stale Beef Chow Fun. "Nnngh," Castiel gurgles and coughs himself.

Sam stumbles to his feet, feeling like he'd just gone one-on-one with a rhinoceros. "Cas?" he manages to croak out again and reaches out tentatively for his soggy friend.

The minute he rests his hand along the curve of the angel's shoulder, Castiel shoots up in his chair, eyes wide and panicked as he sucks in a huge, possibly unnecessary, lungful of air. "Dean," he breathes, jerking in the seat like a twitchy cat as he scans the room desperately.

" _Ow_ ," Dean grunts from somewhere under the table, ostensibly from when he is rudely awakened by Castiel's foot slamming into his gut once the angel regained consciousness.

"Dean?" Sam presses and crouches gingerly to take in the sight of his brother, curled with his arms around both of the angel's legs under the table. It would be funny and Sam would tease him for it, if he had any energy left. As it is, all he can do is blink rather owlishly at Dean while the older Winchester struggles to his feet, also sopping wet and still wearing one of those ridiculously prissy house slippers Hai had given them within the Crystal Palace. Which probably means their boots are still underwater.

Silence.

And then, "What the hell just happened?!" Dean demands, going deep into that store of energy he keeps especially for the sake of being pissed off.

"I…I don't know," Cas croaks, voice sounding more wrecked than usual as he looks Dean over in that totally unsubtle way he does when he wants to make sure Dean isn't injured.

Sam huffs a sigh and plops back down onto the edge of the damp bedspread, hair in his eyes and smelling like the moldy bathroom showers in a men's college dorm.

"Maybe Ao Guang took pity on us," he mutters after a beat, throwing an arm over his eyes with a gross sounding _squelch_. "I mean, he didn't seem like a particularly wrathful pagan or anything."

Dean snorts. "Yeah, nearly drowning us was all in good fun."

Sam shifts his arm a little to crack an eye at his brother. "You did kind of spit in the face of his hospitality, Dean."

"He started it!" Dean shoots back as he lowers himself onto the opposite side of the bed beside Sam.

"Either way, it seems we have failed his challenge," Castiel rumbles wearily from the table. "Unless either of you two sees a gift of weapons and armor somewhere in the vicinity."

Dean takes a cursory look around the room, while Sam doesn't even bother. There's nothing here, no Colt, or Ruby's knife, or special skeleton key that will help them get out of this. No one is really surprised.

It would be too easy for them otherwise, after all. And life has a way of not wanting to be easy for any Winchester.

Besides, they're lucky to even be breathing. Ao Guang must have been feeling sort of magnanimous at the end to whisk them away just in the nick of time.

And then, to properly shit on that act of pity, Dean crosses his arms and mutters, "Yeah, well. Fuck that guy and his fucking underwater house of horrors."

Sam's answer to that is very eloquent. He sneezes.

Which gets Dean upright again, brow furrowed, eyes concerned. "Dude, go get cleaned up and dry off before you get sick. Again. You have the immune system of a five-year-old girl."

Sam scowls a little, but doesn't feel like arguing. Instead, he sits up as well, slowly, and makes his way towards his duffle, and then, with supplies in hand, shuffles along to the bathroom, leaving Dean and Castiel to sit, staring at each other and dripping.

"You okay?" Dean grunts, after a moment, sounding embarrassed.

Castiel nods once. "I believe so," he says slowly, around a distinct shiver in his voice.

Dean nearly rolls his eyes. Instead, he gets up and wordlessly tugs Castiel out of the uncomfortable wooden chair, back towards the bed with him. They don't lie down exactly, but Dean gingerly drapes an arm around the angel's shoulders and Castiel, feeling slightly stronger as the influence of Ao Guang's magic fades, chances calling upon his Heavenly mojo just enough to warm them both slightly, from the chill of the water and the cool winter air outside.

"That's nice, "Dean grunts after a minute, a bit awkwardly.

Castiel eyes him, but doesn't say anything.

"What?" Dean prompts, when the steady look makes him uncomfortable. Castiel has been giving him a lot of significant looks lately, or maybe not _lately_ so much as Dean is starting to become much more aware of them.

"You should not have attempted to fight Ao Guang or destroy his palace as callously as you did," he says, somehow managing to sound all snooty and superior even as he huddles against Dean's side to share warmth. "You should have left me there."

Dean sputters. "Like hell I was…"

Castiel cuts him off by turning and pressing his lips to Dean's. It isn't particularly sexy or anything, especially considering the state of their clothes and the smells in the room. It's just a quick, dry touch of their mouths together that reminds Dean a lot of the way those married couples kiss in sitcoms. It's a _have a nice day at work_ kind of kiss, a _thanks for remembering to buy milk_ or _you did a great job cutting the lawn_ sort of gesture. It's tiny. Offhanded. Completely natural.

Something about it inexplicably lights Dean on fire.

In other words, he suddenly feels really fucking weird.

And it must show on his face because Castiel pulls back abruptly, a thoughtful tilt to his head as he takes Dean in. "Thank you, Dean," he says after a moment, solemnly, and then looks down at the ground, because he clearly has no idea what else to do now that he's made them both infinitely uncomfortable.

Dean sighs and thinks that they probably don't have the energy for this song and dance, at least not right now, not after the day they've just had.

So he coughs a little, tells himself to stop being such a _teenage girl_ , and eventually musters up the gumption to grab Cas's wrist in his hand decisively. Then he stands, pulling the bemused angel up with him. "Go to the other room and catch a shower," he says, gruffly. "Don't want to see what happens if you end up catching cold too."

Castiel blinks. "I don't think I can catch a…"

Dean cuts him off with a roll of his eyes. "Jesus, Cas. _Go_ ," he pushes, using the same tone his father used to use with Sam, when the kid was certain he wasn't sleepy and it wasn't time for bed even if he was yawning every five minutes.

Castiel huffs a little in exasperation but relents, going to the adjoining door and slipping through silently, like a shadow.

Once the door closes behind him, Dean lets out a long breath and shoves his hands into his damp jacket pockets, feeling a rush of inexplicable things all at once: fear at how close that had been, self-loathing at how careless he'd been with Sam's life, surprise and weariness, and above all, an intense rush of relief at having woken up with Castiel and his brother still there today, after he had thought the two of them had been swallowed up by the tide.

He frowns when his fingertips hit the bottom of his coat pocket and scrape against something dry and sharp-edged, the sensation of that in stark contrast to how the rest of his clothes and his body feel.

He curses when he feels whatever is in there cut through the skin of the ring finger on his left hand and narrows his eyes, yanking it out of his pocket.

The pad of his finger is bleeding from a paper-thin cut along the middle, caused by, of all things, a tiny piece of paper.

Dean stares down at the palm of his hand, upon which sits his fortune from Ao Guang's ridiculous cookies, as dry and crisp as a newly-minted bill save for a few drops of fresh red blood that his wound had dripped onto its white corners when it had cut him.

" _An enlightened individual is one who knows his own true value_."

He glares at it and crumples the slip of paper in his fist before tossing it back onto the table, next to the remains of last night's too-good-to-be-true dinner.

Feeling oddly chilled to his bones, he makes the decision to slip into the next room, wondering if Castiel would mind some company in the shower.

  


Meanwhile, back under the chilly, murky depths of Leech Lake, Ao Guang takes in the ruined chambers and halls that had once housed his precious children, the beautiful paintings and priceless artifacts that had remained there now ravaged by the swirling waters that had rushed through this place earlier. Hai stands beside him wordlessly, running his fingers over a muddied tapestry. "Everything is ruined," he reports sadly.

"Not everything," Ao Guang say, and manages to fish out one of the two wooden fans that had been displayed beautifully on the wall before the floods had come. "We will simply make do with what remains at the end of this."

Hai nods and takes the proffered fan, before hanging it back onto its perch. It seems lonely without its partner, but at the same time, it is, at the very least, still _there_.

They begin to work together from there, slowly piecing the chamber back together, as best they can.

There is a stirring behind them both soon after, and Ao Guang turns to see General Xie, sheepish and bowing profusely. "Sire," he reports, "a guest awaits you in the banquet hall."

Hai, looking affronted that a guest would be so brazen as to make his or her way to the hall without invitation, steps forward to deal with the intrusion.

Ao Guang is gracious as he holds out a hand to stop his grandson. "Of course. Hai, please see that the general's wounds are tended to. I am capable of seeing this guest without you."

"Grandfather?" Hai asks, confused.

Ao Guang smiles and ruffles his hair in a fond way, perhaps in a way that is slightly apologetic, for the cruel words against humankind he had used earlier to rouse Dean Winchester (however unsuccessfully) to thought. "Go, my boy," he urges. "This guest is not one I am comfortable exposing you to. Not when you are still so young."

Confused, Hai can only bow as he helps take the limping General to his quarters, watching over his shoulder as his grandfather disappears from the ruined hallway looking oddly pleased with himself.

  


When Ao Guang enters his banquet hall he finds Death there and waiting for him, being served dishes of steamed shrimp and clams by the Dragon Emperor's terrified servants.

"Your manners, as always, are deplorable," Ao Guang says by way of cheerful greeting to this familiar specter. He takes a seat opposite the reaper, who sucks delicately at the head of a shrimp he had just pulled from its body. Ao Guang cheerfully pours him a cup of hot tea.

"You are far too old an acquaintance for me to stand on ceremony with, Ao Guang," Death responds dryly and raps his knuckles on the table in front of the tea cup twice in thanks before picking it up and sipping from it. "I have missed the food from your kitchens."

Ao Guang watches the destroyer of all things eat for a little while longer before noting, "You did not come all this way simply to eat, Yanluo," he says, amiably enough.

"No, as delightfully fresh as this is," Death agrees and wipes delicately at his mouth with a napkin as Ao Guang gestures to his servants to bring more food.

"Then what?"

"I came simply to discover what fanciful weapon you have gifted the righteous man and his traveling companions with this time around. A hammer? One of your fans? Heaven forbid, another of your pillars?"

Ao Guang laughs and shakes his head. "I have given them the only weapon that matters, Yanluo," he says flatly, as that cheerful faced serving boy from earlier bounds forward, carrying trays of fruit and sweets. The Dragon Emperor smirks invitingly at his guest. "Please. Eat."

Death looks back at him drolly for that, and reaches forward to take one of the fortune cookies from the proffered trays. He cracks it open without ceremony and does not bother to eat the cookie itself, mostly because the hard texture of the treats have never been pleasant to his particular palate.

"Mistakes are only lessons in disguise," he reads out loud.

Ao Guang says nothing in response, and after a moment, Death gamely pockets the fortune and rises from his seat, towards the door. "Thank you for your hospitality, your highness," Death says around the wisp of a smile. "I take my leave of you, then."

"You did not like your fortune?" Ao Guang asks.

"On the contrary," Death answers, donning his hat. "I sincerely wish for it to be true. Because recently, I find I am being _horribly_ overworked."

And with that, Death disappears without another word, leaving Ao Guang alone in the banquet hall of his magnificent, slowly crumbling palace.

The Dragon Emperor booms in laughter — one as old as he can only laugh in the face of what life throws before him, after all — and with a wave of one hand, he disappears, taking his entire kingdom with him.

According to Hai, the Maldives are nice this time of year.

  



End file.
